


Life and Times of the Emotionally Screwed

by Mamihlapinatapai



Category: Glee
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-11-26
Updated: 2011-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:50:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 18,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mamihlapinatapai/pseuds/Mamihlapinatapai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The waiting room is split down the middle. The strong and the weak, the ones who ran and the ones who stayed, and Kurt's in there for three minutes when he thinks they'd be a lot closer if the divided the room based on the emotionally screwed and the well-adjusted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AU from around the middle of the first season.

He has a best friend. His name's Finn. (He never stopped saying that.)

The thing is: they never really had a choice in the matter. Their mom's met in that baby birthing class with all the breathing, when they're still just fetuses with four toes, and everything just sort of fell into place. He's older by two months, and grew up slightly faster then Finn, but they honestly can't survive without the other.

When he turns sixteen, he gets drunk off the scotch bottle on top of the fridge and ends up near the state line. Without pants. At midnight.

It's terrifying and exhilarating, and there's a number on his palm with the name Holly on it that he could probably call, but he doesn't. He calls Finn, and makes his best friend drive an hour to come pick him up. It's funny, because he kind of expects a lecture. Finn's always been the responsible one, but when Finn drives up, he rolls down the window and winks.

"Need a ride, pretty lady?"

That, right there, is their friendship in a nutshell.

When he's sixteen, his English teacher comes to school with a hangover, and to get out of actually teaching he just puts a quote by some dude on the board and tells them to write at least a paragraph about what it means to them. _Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion_. He's sixteen and pissed off and hung over too, so he writes _bullshit_ on the top of the paper, and doesn't come to class for three days.

(He still gets an A, because _hello_ hot badass football player here.)

Anyway, he's seventeen when it predictably comes back to bite him in the ass, because screwing the two girls your best friend's in love with definitely falls under the _keeping life moving_ category.

Quinn's first, because he's always been more like his father then he cares to be, and his old man married his best friend's girl. (Or at least that's what he gathers from the pictures under his mom's bed that don't have his dad's head cut off.)

When he first meets the girl she has a halo over her head and a smile on her face, and it's really her fault that he immediately thinks she's pretty. When he's six his mom found charity like some people find god, and dragged him along to the nearest homeless shelter where Quinn and her mom are spending their weekly day helping the unfortunate or something.

(They spend the whole time asking each other questions, and by the time he has to leave he knows her favorite color, food, holiday, ice cream, tv show…)

They're in middle school when she's drops all her books right in front of him, and he's got his hands full with the cheerleader who's acting like he's the best thing since toasted bread, or however the hell that phrase goes.

Finn's been chivalrous since he came out of the freaking womb, so he bends down to pick them up and drops his in the process. Quinn lets out a laugh that sounds nothing like it did when they were six, and the moment happens too quick to be anything but unimportant. But two weeks later and she's on his best friend's arm, and, well, isn't that just the most disgusting thing you've ever heard.

She's not drunk when everything falls apart, because Quinn may be a Christian but she's been drinking since she was pretty enough to get the high school boys to buy it for her. He's not drunk because he is one of those high school boys.

Her mom's been instilling body issues into the girl since she learned how to add and subtract calories, so two extra pounds on the scale throws her into a state of severe desperation.

(Though, when he looks back on it later, he begins to think that maybe she was desperate for another reason, but by then it's all over so nothing matters.)

Two lines on a stick shatter the pieces he's being struggling to glue back together since his dad left, so he says to hell with it and calls her a MILF in the middle of the hallway.

They spend ten minutes in an empty Home Ec room, and he can't even deny that he loves her anymore.

Finn finds out because nothing has ever been his for long, and just because he's sorry doesn't mean he didn't enjoy it at the time. But he wisely keeps his mouth shut, and pretends that he didn't see Finn in the corner of his eye before he punched him. He also pretends that he couldn't knock him out with one hit. (Dude, fight club remember.)

Quinn gives birth to the baby in April, and he's there because she's never been that cruel. After they give her to her adoptive parents, he crawls into her bed and doesn't leave until she's discharged. It's funny that when he begins to imagine spending the rest of his life with her he doesn't flinch or cringe, he just wraps his arms tighter around her and feels his heart speed up.

(Does anybody else think that fate's trying to tell him something?)

He meets Rachel Berry on the first day of freshman year when Derek Hutchinson throws a slushie his way and he ducks just in time for her to walk up and introduce herself. His thoughts go like this: Damn she's hot. Oh shit she's going to cry. That skirt is _ridiculous_. I think she just tried to kill me with her eyes. And then he flinches, because she definitely looks like she's trying to kill him. But instead she stalks off, and then the hallway laughs in unison, so that's the end of any Rachel Berry thoughts that don't include slushies or slurs on her locker.

Their relationship is an afterthought. ( _After_ Quinn calls him a Lima loser in the hallway, that is.) She's annoying, and makes him want to simultaneously stab out his eardrums and set himself on fire, but she's hot and looks like sin, and Puck's never missed an opportunity to make something awkward. (And yes he is referring to that night during freshman year when he and Sophie Henderson practically had sex in front of a whole room of people.)

He's pretty confident that it'll be nothing more than sex, because the whole never-ending talking thing only stops long enough to get her shirt off, and seriously that's the only time he isn't planning ways to suffocate her in the back of his mind.

And then he's like _shit_ , because knowing Berry's favorite color or how soft her hair feels against his chest late at night was never part of the plan. He didn't plan for Rachel's uncanny way to get under people's skin without warning.

And then he's sitting in an empty bathroom watching her wash slushie out of his hair. He can't even come up with any other excuse for why he's focused more on her voice then her rack, so he tries to disappoint her, and well she's Rachel and somehow makes him feel like an ass.

So, he quits football, stays in Glee, and buys a dictionary, because if he's doing it then he's doing it right.

Everything falls apart. Maybe because he's always sucked at keeping things together, but probably because he won't stop looking at Quinn and she won't stop looking at Finn.

Three years later, and there's a ring on her finger and a ring on his, and aren't they just the luckiest bastards.

He meets her two months into freshman year, when he sneaks out by the dumpsters for a cigarette. She's standing there eyes closed, one leg on the wall behind her. He doesn't even notice she's moving until he realizes that the cigarette that had been previously between his lips has taken residence between her lips. And all he can really think is: _holy shit that was hot_.

Here's the thing: Santana Lopez... well she's evil. And self-destructive and doesn't expect anything out of him. She's his mirror and everybody knows it. Santana was the last person he ever expected to have feelings for, except may be extreme hate, but you have to care to feel anything, right? And he didn't, she was just a way to blow off steam.

But sometime between sticking his tongue down her throat in an abandoned janitor's closet, and punching Eric Stevenson for rubbing up against her at a party he decides that yes, he cares about this girl. What's most disturbing is that he really doesn't mind it that much.

They're friends first, and fuck-buddies second, but he still learns her favorite color and the way her hair feels just because he can.

Four years later, when he runs into her in a grocery store in New York, he'll wonder what happened to that girl.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But there's an entire paper at home, hidden under her bed that reads like a tragedy and at the top: Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it's better to leave them broken than try to hurt yourself putting it back together.

Santana Lopez prides herself on being just slightly hot enough to get by with all the Rachel Berry type crazy she pushes on the student body.

When she's a sophomore she gets Ms. Hinsdale for an English teacher, so no matter how short her Cheerio skirt is, she's not getting out of any assignments.

There's one, midway through the year. Write out and explain what a famous quote means to you, and because she's Santana, well she picks this one: Everything in life is luck. And below it, writes something along the lines of _I hope luck will get me the hell out of this class_.

Ms. Hinsdale gives her and F, so she walks into the dean's office with a pout on her lips and a ring in her belly button and it's like bam hello new English class.

But there's an entire paper at home, hidden under her bed that reads like a tragedy and at the top: Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it's better to leave them broken than try to hurt yourself putting it back together.

Santana's not dumb she surrounds herself with people like Puck and Brittany, because those two are too busy comparing the quality of conditioner to give a damn about a stupid English assignment that she almost didn't lie on.

Meeting Quinn Fabray simultaneously ruins and improves her life. When she walks down the hall in seventh grade people whisper about her, but only because she screwed Devin Richardson that weekend, in eighth grade it's that she's best friends with the junior high head cheerleader. But the fact that she'll always be the sidekick to the blonde angel hits her hard enough to hurt. That's when she takes up vodka shots and cigarettes that she steals from a guy who smiles at her like she spins the world.

When she's eleven her mom comes home with a breast cancer diagnosis, and from the fallout, it might as well be a death sentence. She doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, doesn't do anything except stare at the ceiling and talk about what they should do when she dies. Her dad spends his days juggling work and insurance phone calls, so the mom stuff falls to her.

She learns how to make macaroni and cheese out of the box, and clean the bathroom, and, once, she accidently dyes all her dad's white socks pink. She packs her little brother's lunch and if she doesn't cut his sandwich the same way as mom used to, he doesn't say anything. Because she's trying, and that's more than any of them can say for the mother that didn't really raise them.

While she's burning her fourth grilled cheese in a row, the other girls are having their first boy/girl parties and experimenting with make-up they don't need. She doesn't get to do any of those things, and eventually she learns not to miss them. It still hurts, so when her mom finally goes into remission, she seduces the star basketball player and screws him under the bleachers.

She doesn't miss out on anything from then on.

Dating Noah Puckerman is probably the worst idea she's ever had. And not because he's a jerk, or drinks and sleeps around, because she's not keen on being a hypocrite, but because suddenly people define her as a girlfriend. Finn's dating Quinn and they're like high school royalty, or something equally as traumatizing.

But in all honesty, she likes going from Santana to _Santana and Puck_. There's a difference. A huge, the hockey team doesn't try to stick their hands up her skirt, _difference_. She likes having someone to text all night long, even if it is just about her underwear.

And then one day in junior year she wakes up and realizes that she's never been anybody by herself. It's Quinn and Santana or Puck and Santana or Brittany and Santana, and damn it if that doesn't sort of hurt like hell. So she breaks up with him over his credit score, because Santana Lopez is anything but someone's _something_.

When Rachel Berry attaches herself to Finn like a succubus, Quinn makes her join Glee. It's horrible, and painful, and makes her want to slit her wrists. (But only when she's watching Puck watch Quinn.)

And then, well, everything just rips apart at the seams. Quinn gets pregnant, and Puck dates man-hands, and Finn believes some dumbass story about a hot tub. She sits down, and wonders what the hell happened to them. The clock strikes midnight and she runs out of time to answer that question, because then Finn punches Puck and she really doubts there ever was a _them_.

Matt Rutherford is an accident. Not an _oops didn't mean to slip on that rug and impregnate you_ accident, but moreso a _you were never suppose to be_ this _guy_ accident. He's always been on the outskirts of the group, the guy who stands by the wall at parties and watches everybody else get hammered.

So kissing him in an empty supply closet was definitely not something she thought she'd ever do. It's not rough like with Puck, but gentle, hesitant. Like he's terrified of her. She thinks good and slams his back up against the metal shelves.

Quinn has her baby in April. Puck's on one side of the bed, and Finn's in the waiting room, and she's pretty sure Brittany's stealing cotton balls with Mike down the hall. (Aren't they just the most fucked up group ever.)

Matt takes her hand when they walk out.

Four years later, she's living in New York, and there's a crib in the room next to hers. When she runs into Tina Cohen- Chang still wearing all black with a tan line on her finger, she'll wonder what the hell happened to all of them.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From then on, she's the weird girl in the back of the class, who everbody expects will just kill herself.

Tina Cohen- Chang blends into the background just enough so that her first slushie is five months into her freshman year. (Rachel Berry's was on the first day of that year.)

By sophomore year, Harvard has already been picked as her first choice school, and she's forced to take every AP class that's available.

British Literature is what she gets for first period, and she snaps the rubber band on her wrist the whole way there. On the board in swirly, cursive writing that makes her want to gag is this: Pick a favorite British author and write a paper based entirely around one of their quotes. Due tomorrow. No excuses.

Turns out their original teacher spent her summer screwing a senior under the bleachers and got herself knocked up. So they get stuck with a psychotic, way too cheerful subsitute that has a bottle of anti-bacterial soap on her desk, and keeps muttering about this not being a part of a counselor's job.

Anyway, she still doesn't have the paper written by eleven that night, because her parents still aren't home, and god help her if she's going to pretend like she cares. Instead she spends her time singing at the top of her lungs and dying her hair pink.

She skips the assignment, and waits for her parents to walk in the door. They don't, and she's run out of options to get their attention.

Ms. Pillsbury gives her a look, when she walks in sans books, and gives her a pass for both the paper, and to leave fifth period to take a visit to the counselor's office. Because, yeah, her parents don't know her _birthday_ , but she's the one that needs therapy.

Quinn Fabray complains about the pressure her parents put on her, and she thinks: lucky bitch at least they care. It sounds a lot less depressing when she's not word vomiting it to Glee during practice.

They stare at her for a full minute, while Quinn bursts into pregnancy tears, before Mr. Shue clears his throat, pulls her aside, and asks her if she would like to talk. She starts to snap the rubber band on her wrist and Puck, who's always been the most observant out of the group, steps up and throws her a lifeline.

"Guys, this isn't fucking Oprah, can we get through practice. I have a pool to clean," it's harsh, accompanied by a knowing, but empty, smirk. He throws a touch of _hidden agenda_ into it, so the group just sighs simultaneously and continues practice.

Except for Quinn, who's just as observant as Puck is when she's not focusing on her cuticles. Or crying, that is. The Queen Bee notices the wink he sends her way, and Tina's like _well fuck_ , this wasn't supposed to be this hard.

Artie just stares at them, and she's getting the feeling that they are way off base about the relationship between her and Puck.

In reality, he found her sobbing in a storage closet on the second floor, when he stumbled in with a Cheerio attached to his mouth. He untangles himself from the brunette, and tells her that he'll pick her up later, but right now he's got things to do. Airhead numero uno leaves a little sluttier than when she walked in, and Puck sits down and listens to Tina vent about things he most likely doesn't care about.

When she's done, he nods and tells her that he's Quinn's baby's daddy. A secret for a secret, and they leave with a little less weight on their shoulders.

000

The stutter starts maybe because she hates public speaking, but probably because it makes people look at her. Even if it is just with pity.

The middle school counselor comes to her house, and spends an hour talking to her parents about the academic and social problems associated with such a disability.

The word _academic_ catches her parents' attention, so they spend an unusual eight and a half minutes telling her how important it is that she gets into Harvard. She abandons her previous plans to go to school the next day without a stutter, and instead pulls out every black piece of clothing she owns.

From then on, she's the weird girl in the back of the class, who everbody expects will just kill herself.

In the next three months, her parents have no choice but to notice her.

(She dyes her hair blue at the four month mark when Mr. and Mrs. Cohen-Chang don't come home for three straight days.)

Artie is an accident.

No, that's not true. He's just unplanned. The whole freaking situation is unplanned.

Falling for the cripple was never even a _subcategory_ , and he sure as hell wasn't supposed to know that she didn't actually have a stutter.

After she tells him, he doesn't talk to her for two full weeks. It's so obvious that even most of Glee notices it. In typical Mercedes fashion, she sits Tina down just long enough to tell her: "Girl, I am not losing Sectionals because you and Artie are acting like spoiled toddlers, by refusing to talk to each other."

Tina's all _whatever crazy_ , but Artie, who evidently received a similar lecture by Kurt, drops his head like a scolded school boy and approaches her during passing period the next day. They skip out of third period and spend two hours talking in an empty janitor's closet.

When they exit, she's sitting on his lap, and later she takes off all six of the rubber bands on her arms.

Quinn has her kid, and she and Artie sit in the waiting room watching Finn pace a hole into the floor, and Brittany and Mike steal tongue depressors out of a room down the hall. She's in dark blue, and every couple of minutes her glances over and smiles.

Four years later, and divorce papers are signed like they don't mean the end of a future. There's a picture of her daughter in her pocket that's faded and crinkled and tear-streaked. When she picks up her mail, there's a letter. Brittany's dead, and who the hell thought they'd all end up happy.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I lost my wife? I didn't lose her, she was taken from me. I didn't misplace Brittany, like she was a set of fucking car keys, Puck.

Mike Chang can tell you two things about himself: He's freaking awesome, and- well that really just sums it all up. He gets fantastic grades in school, he's a stud at football, and is untouchable when it comes to beer pong.

When he's sixteen he writes a perfectly edited paper about a quote by Abraham Lincoln: Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. It's written the night before it's due and he, of course, gets an A. Life's perfect, at least his is, but sometimes he sits down and wonders when it will break apart at the seams.

And then, during varsity football practice his sophomore year, a crack appears. Sylvester pulls out all the girls during sixth period, and guessing from the scattered bodies on the field, they've been running laps since.

While the coach's are yelling at each other, (which is more like Sue yelling and Tanaka turning really, really red), he's distracted by the blond blur who's twirling her way around the field. She's talking to a group of other girls, laughing occasionally, and it's like _bam_ hello future wife. She's stunning, tall, with legs up to there, but that's not what he notices first. No, what he notices first is the smile that she sends his way before turning her back to him.

It's bright and big, and reminds him of sunshine. (Or skittles. Because skittles are kind of kick ass, dude.)

Puck catches up to him, helmet in his hands, and a smirk on his face.

"Dude, why are you staring at Brittany Pierce?"

"I'm not star- wait that's Pierce?" He looks over again, wondering how in the hell the girl with braces and the flattest chest in all of Ohio blossomed into that in just three months.

"Yeah, hot huh?" Maybe Puck means it as a joke, but a spark of something that tastes strangely and annoyingly like jealousy flares up in his chest. He smacks the top of the helmet in Puck's hand before pointing at a fuming Tanaka.

"Let's go, coach looks like he's going to snap something."

000

When he's ten, he considers his family pretty normal, but life's a bitch so daddy gets caught embezzling money, and suddenly he's another statistic in the fucking book of _broken home and gardens_. Whatever.

He was never really that close to his dad anyway, he worked a lot, but his mom's always been his best friend, and shit if he knows how to fix this mess.

His mom finds therapy like some people find god, so he gets to sit on a couch twice a week acting like he doesn't give a damn. Like he doesn't stare at his ceiling every night playing let's make a deal with the universe.

It gets easier as the weeks pass, and when Noah Puckerman offers him a shot at the end of the summer before ninth grade, he thinks to hell with it, and slams it down. Two weeks later, and Molly Chapman takes his virginity in the spare bedroom of the Hutchinson house.

(Daddy issues fucking suck, dude.)

Their sophomore year, he finds Brittany making out with Santana in an empty hallway, and to be honest it's too hot to be disappointed over.

Finn joins Glee because of Rachel Berry, and somehow they all get roped into it too, which isn't bad just- annoying. But he gets to 'bust a move' and evidently that makes up for the tragedy that is his voice, but the moment he realizes that he's never going to leave this stupid club of misfits comes late in September.

She doesn't notice him at first. Practice ended an hour ago, and everybody else is gone, but she's still there, music loud, eyes closed, and he loses his breath for half a second. He's always known she could dance, but not like this.

Her moves are graceful, quick and slow, improbably and simultaneously, and he feels like he's intruding on something private, something special. But as he's turning to leave, she opens her eyes.

He expects a giggle, a flawless, full blown smile maybe, what he gets instead is the small grin, the seriousness of her eyes that contradicts everything he's ever know about Brittany S. Pierce. She grabs his hand, pulls him close, whispers _dance with me_ against the shell of his ear.

 _Then_ she giggles.

That's where it starts.

Three months later when Quinn has her baby, they spend the entire twelve hour process stealing things out of coma patient's rooms, because Brittany hates hospitals. After, she takes his hand and smiles at him, and damn if he doesn't pray that this will be forever.

It's not, of course. Four years later and he's having an argument with his best friends in the kitchen of their home.

"You just lost your wife, Mike. It's okay to slow down for just a second."

He whirls around, suddenly furious. Maybe because he's smashed, but probably because right now he just doesn't care enough to pretend like he's fine and dandy.

"I lost my wife? I didn't lose her, she was taken from me. I didn't misplace Brittany, like she was a set of fucking car keys, Puck. Brittany's gone, one minute she's standing there laughing at me, and the next she's gone. Her heart stopped, and you want to know what the last thing I said to her was?" It's rhetorical, but he pauses long enough for Finn to take a step forward and Puck to take one back. Matt doesn't move.

(Its four years later, but daddy-issues still take precedence when it comes to emotional break downs. Puck will always be a coward, and Finn will always pretend not to be. And, really, _considering_ , it's just surprising that Matt is still there.)

"I told her that obviously she lost my socks, because they just don't just get up and walk away. The last thing I did with my wife before she _fucking died_ was fight about missing socks."

The kitchen counter's contents smash to the floor,like an orchestra out of tune, and still, not one of them flinch.

Breathing hard, he glances at the scar that runs from ear to ear on the back of Finn's head, and wonders what the hell they all did to deserve this.


	5. Chapter 5

Brittany S. Pierce is- well she's dumb. The stereotypical blond cheerleader that everyone adores, but sometimes pities.

But here's the thing: she may not know how to find the area of a triangle (rainbows?) and she may not know all forty-four presidents in order, but she doesn't really need to know those things. Because the minute Santana pulls her into the bathroom with a smirk on her face and sex-eyes she'd forget it all anyway.

(Really she's just saving time.)

Here's what Brittany does know: Life is really, really hard. And that she should not under any circumstances be in a junior English class.

The second one comes back to bite her in the ass when her teacher walks into the room looking like Puck does on a daily basis. He writes a bunch of words up on the board, and in the fifteen minutes it takes Brittany to read and fully comprehend them she realizes this assignment is going to totally suck.

Because the only thing that comes to mind when she reads this: "'Tis one this to be tempted, but another to fall," is the way Santana's hands feel on her neck after her third shot and fourth cigarette. And somehow she doubts that Mr. Johnson would accept _that_ as a paper. She skips the assignment, and takes a page from her best friend's rule book, so that when she tells him she doesn't have it, the next day, he's too busy staring at her chest to even give a damn.

When she's eleven she walks in on Mary, her eighteen year old sister, sticking her finger down her throat, and her whole world is thrown off balance. She may have spent most of health class experimenting with Jeremy Mitchell in the back of the class to catch much, but she does remember the word bulimia, and the glare her sister throws her when she's admitted to an eating disorder center is worth it if she doesn't end up looking like the pictures at the end of the chapter.

She starts to dance, and sometimes for a moment when she's whirling and twirling across the dance studio's floor, she forgets that she hasn't talked to Mary in three months. Two weeks after her sister comes home, fifteen pounds heavier and a hundred times more bitter, Brittany plays Clue and finds her sister in the kitchen with the Chef knife.

Her family's well enough known in the community to keep the suicide attempt hush hush, and when Brittany winces every time she hears a siren, they all just assume it's because of the fall Mary took down the stairs last summer.

From then on Brittany swears to herself, she'll never be that girl. But sometimes when she's standing in front of the mirror after a shower, she glances at the toilet and wonders what she'd look like 10 pounds skinnier.

(It gets a little harder every time she has to step on to the Cheerio scale.)

She meets Santana on the first day of eighth grade, and the the brunette introduces herself with a smirk that will soon become her signature, and a "so did your sister really fall down the stairs or did she slice her wrists?" Turns out one of Rachel Berry's fathers was the ER attending and the Broadway freak felt it was her job to straighten out the supposed rumor that was floating around. (A year later and she doesn't feel anything but satisfaction at watching Puck toss a slushie at the bitch.)

She and Santana are friends first, fuck-buddies second, and well-adjusted teenagers last. And then they join Glee and the lines sort of blur.

Glee is fun. Like puppies or water balloon fights. But it's still stupid, because Santana spends her time watching Puck, and Brittany hates being ignored. Ad then one day she turns around and there's Mike Chang.

Mike Chang's has always been the funny guy, the one who would stop by her house when Santana was too busy with Puck. He's Kurt, in a non-gayish form, always the best friend, never the boyfriend. The point is Michael Chang is not the kind of guy you fall in love with, but Brittany's too smart (or dumb) to follow all the rules.

It's weird, because when he walks into the practice room, she notices. Her body feels on fire, and Brittany would know what that feels like because one time she lit her shirt sleeve on fire while in Home Ec class. Anyway, Brittany's tired of being alone, so she grabs his hand and whispers dance with me, and he does.

Two months after that, Quinn goes into labor, and Brittany shakes all the way to the hospital. Mike's not like Puck of Finn with the avoidance, so he pulls over and refuses to move the car until she tells him what's wrong. And Brittany just kind of word vomits her entire life story.

Mike's not very articulate, so he clenches his jaw, nods, and puts the car in drive. But when they get out of the car, he grabs her hand and bets her ten dollars and a Reese's Cup that he can steal more stuff from a patient's room than her, before Quinn pops out the kid.

Brittany loves Reese's Cups, and Mike, so she smiles and takes off at a sprint.

Four years later, she drops dead right in front of him, so she doesn't get to wonder who the hell decided they deserved this.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Past the panic, and the fear, and the pain, there's this feeling like he's just about to get the air pushed back into his lungs. That's the feeling he gets around Rachel Berry.

His best friend is Noah Puckerman.

That's how he introduces himself from elementary school until he gets quarterback in high school and he and Quinn get the throne. Puck's always been the confident one, the kind of guy who can walk into an unfamiliar room and five minutes later be drinking buddies with everybody.

Before high school, and the ranking system it brought, Finn was more than happy to let Puck make their friends. He's always been a bit on the awkward side, and to be honest he'd rather get mauled by a bear than walk up to a girl whose favorite color he doesn't know and take a shot out of her belly button.

(Mostly because he's shy, but sort of because belly buttons freak him out since they're like the leftovers of the tails they had as babies. That's just way too creepy for him.)

Anyway, he has a best friend. His name's Puck and he knocked up Finn's girlfriend.

Lifetime movie anyone?

He's in Brittany's English class counting the number of ceiling tiles when his teacher shows up and decides that he doesn't like teaching or children and chooses to punish them instead. It only takes Finn ten minutes to understand the writing prompt, but that's because he sits next to Josh Adams instead of Brittany, and since he doesn't answer every question with rainbows, Finn thinks he's got to be pretty smart.

Puck hasn't slept with his girlfriend, Rachel Berry is nonexistent in his social life, Glee is that picture on the bulletin board that one person disfigures every year, and he has no idea why this is even important.

(A year and two months later, and Finn Hudson could probably write a book on this: 'Tis one this to be tempted, but another to fall.")

Besides, he hates typing on the computer, so he pulls the ADHD card and goes to the nurse for the rest of the period.

Meeting Quinn is a total accident.

He's in middle school, standing there watching Puck get groped by a cheerleader, which has become a normal Monday morning activity, and all of a sudden this tiny blond tornado is dropping her books right in front of him.

His mother always taught him to be helpful, and who wants to disappoint a single mother?

Anyway, he bends to pick them up, but instead drops all of his.

She laughs. This light, airy giggle that hits him right in the chest, and when he glances up she's squatting next to him, number in her hand, saying "Hi, I'm Quinn."

Two weeks later, and people stop referring to him as Finn Hudson, Puck's best friend, and start referring to him as Finn Hudson, Quinn's boyfriend.

(Later, he'll look back and wonder how different life would be if he had glanced up and noticed the smirk that was frozen across Puck's face, or the half moons carved into his palms. He'll look back and wonder what might have happened if he noticed anything about the guy he once rescued from the state line.)

The world shatters on a Tuesday when he's nine, with the sound of a doorbell and the crinkling of an envelope. It's followed by three weeks of sobbing, two weeks of closed doors, and a full month where the only thing in his mom's stomach is saltines and vodka.

He stays at Puck's most of the time. And really, who would have thought that the Puckerman house would be the functional one out of the two.

And then one morning he wakes up to the smell of bleach and pancakes, and he has him mom back. His life _back_.

But sometimes he still wakes up in the middle of the night, half suffocating on the smell of smoke and sand and blood. Of bullets piercing skin, the echoing of screams ringing in his ears until he catches his breath.

(But only sometimes.)

While Quinn Fabray stumbles her way into his life, Rachel Berry dances her way in.

The truth is he probably wouldn't tolerate her so much if she wasn't so needy with him. Quinn has always been independent. But Rachel clings to him like he's a life vest.

Although, there's this familiar feeling. He's eight and drowning in the community pool with a cooler string wrapped around his ankle. His mom's half submerged and Puck already within touching distance, but not there just yet. It's that feeling. Past the panic, and the fear, and the pain, there's this feeling like he's just about to get the air pushed back into his lungs. Yeah, that's the feeling he gets around Rachel Berry.

Quinn tells him she's pregnant on a Wednesday, and he can't even be upset about it. Because those glances that his best friend gives his girlfriend are, and probably never have been, innocent. He'll take her where he can get her.

Glee sings Lean on Me to them on a Thursday. And for just a second, he closes his eyes, and pretends he doesn't see the way Quinn watches Puck.

Rachel tells him the baby isn't his on a Friday, and he shouldn't even be upset about it. Because he has a computer, and knows how to Google, and unless he's fucking like superman, there is no possible way that Drizzle is his.

(But a guy can hope, right.)

Forgiving Puck is easier than he thought it would be.

One day in February he wakes up, and doesn't feel like running his best friend down with his mom's Toyota. So when Puck walks past him during lunch he takes his backpack off the chair next to him, and continues to talk to Henderson.

They're still not how they used to be, and probably never will be, but Finn figures being like they were before is what started this whole mess. Right?

Quinn's water breaks on a Saturday in April, and when he picks up his house phone, Puck's screaming something along the lines of _will you stop screaming in my ear, it can't hurt that bad_ , then the line goes dead.

When he gets to the hospital fifteen minutes later, Quinn's in a wheelchair and Puck's walking like he did after the time Finn accidently dropped a bowling bowl in his lap.

Quinn's got Satan in her eyes, so when they play rock, paper, scissors, he loses on purpose because Puck always goes for rock. He gets to stay in the waiting room, pacing a hole in the floor.

On a Sunday two years after they graduate, Finn sits in a doctor's office for three hours just to be told that he has brain cancer.

Rachel finds out first, in that eerie way that she has, and manages to have all of Glee in the waiting room when he comes out from his first round of chemo.

Rachel tries, and fails, at getting everybody to sing a rousing chorus of oh he's a jolly good fellow, Puck sneaks in his X-box and a dirty magazine, Quinn smiles at him and mouths something that looks like _I love you_ but could be _I loathe her_. Mike and Brittany continuously disappear from the room until Brittany comes running in with a handful of gauze yelling I win, while Santana and Matt try to hide the fact that their best friends are amusing.

Finn just wants to throw up.

Four years later, and he walks out of the hospital with his wife, one more tumor lighter and eleven more stitches heavier to find Mercedes Jones standing there in blood covered scrubs with a cigarette in her hand.

For a split second he forgets the past two years and takes a step towards her. Then it all comes rushing back, and he decides to take the long way around to the car.

Finn would probably wonder what the hell kind of karma Glee _has_ to deal with all this, but he's like _this_ close to passing out in the parking lot, and he likes to focus on one thing at a time.


	7. Chapter 7

Mercedes Jones doesn't have a best friend until sophomore year of high school.

When she was younger, nine or so, she had lots of friends. A group of girls from the Baptist church in the next town over that would come over every Sunday for fake tea parties and their turn to jump on the trampoline in her back yard.

But none of them were ever best friends; none of them were girls she would call at midnight to reveal her nightmares.

She thought that maybe it was just the age, that when they were older they'd be closer. That maybe they'd spend hours talking about their boy problems and family problems that, at a weight of ninety pounds, Mercedes actually had to worry about. But by eleven Mercedes is ten pounds overweight and the girls finally do whisper to each other in the pews of the church.

(Just about her.)

When she's fifteen she walks into her English class with an A- and a 3.89 GPA. But on the third day of the fourth semester her teacher screws her.

Mr. Jacobson picks twenty-two quotes chosen at random and places them in a hat, instructing each student to pick one as they file into the classroom.

She gets stuck with this one: Maybe I wanted to hear it so badly that my ears betrayed my mind in order to secure my heart. She spends the next two weeks of her life bull shitting a paper about a quote she can't relate to.

It's her first D, so she goes in and talks to her teacher, even though her parents spent the entirety of the previous night's dinner telling her that it was okay, that she can make it up.

She tells him that it's not fair that he graded her on life experiences instead of her written work; that she at least deserved a B, and for just a second she sees herself as Rachel Berry, resident grade-grubber. But she doesn't exactly care that she could, at that moment, be compared to the tiny, annoying brunette.

He looks her up and down, and then glances back at her paper. _I can't give you a B for writing this paper about the world at large. I wanted to see how you felt, Mercedes. I'm sorry_.

(A year and a half later, she writes the paper because it's all she can relate to.)

Mercedes Jones has both her parents.

She doesn't deal with grief from abandonment or death like most of Glee. Her dad is a dentist, her mom a secretary. And she thinks that maybe the group looks at her differently because of it. Like because she hasn't experienced loss on the scale they have, that means she's on the outside of this tight little circle they have.

And shit if she doesn't resent them for it.

Because she may have family, but they, they have _friends_. They have relationships, failing or not, and all she has at the end of the day is a best friend that she really wants to kiss and a school that draws bloated figures of her on the bathroom walls.

It doesn't start with Quinn, no matter how much she wants to blame it on the pregnant queen, it instead starts with a piece of paper.

Later, she'll look back and read the note in the context of what they were actually talking about, but at that precise moment the only thing she could comprehend was that she was being asked to hang out by a guy.

It was the first time, and she still wishes she had said no.

Mercedes thinks that maybe she knew about Kurt even before Rachel and Tina gay-ventioned her, but denial is the name of the game and she could play it almost as well as she could sing.

When he finally tells her, she may want to 'bust out his windows' but what she actually does is spend an hour in the bathroom sobbing. Then she walks out, shoulders squared, smile on her face and who thought Mercedes Jones would pull a Quinn Fabray and pretend to be fine.

Quinn has her baby while she's still playing bitter and not talking to Kurt. But spending that many hours in the waiting room watching Finn drive a hole in the floor leaves little for her to do but discreetly watch the boy who shattered her heart. And then it's like _hello reality_ because while she is watching Kurt, Kurt is watching Finn and she finally gets it.

She finally understands the thing that no one in Glee gets, even after they sang the freaking song. Life isn't about getting what you want; it's about dealing with what you have.

It's probably suppose to comfort her, the fact that in some way or another no one in Glee has exactly what they want because Brittany's sister still doesn't talk to her and the teenagers in the next room still don't get their daughter. Still, though, that revelation almost drives her to her knees, because they might not have what they want, but they all have something.

And at the end of the day, Mercedes Jones just isn't damaged enough, broken enough to even receive that.

That's the day she begins to hate them.

Senior year she pulls a Finn and leaves Glee two weeks before Sectionals. Half of them try to convince her to come back and the other half convince themselves they don't need her, but when it comes down to it she's never really been in Glee.

Because a month ago they all sat in another waiting room watching Rachel try to kill nurses when her dad had an asthma attack, and they all helped Matt limp around when he snapped his fibula during a bad hit in a football game.

Because this group feeds on grief and tragedy, and they all just stare at her when she speaks because this girl is supposedly whole and healed and what does she know about anything that they're going through.

(They still win, and yeah, that hurt more than she expected.)

She graduates, and two years later she's a secretary at the hospital the next town over from Lima but in the process of becoming a nurse when Finn walks in with a brain tumor, the group following behind.

They barely notice her, and she walks in with a stack of papers just as Puck is saying something about Rachel and setting people on fire. It's so familiar that she stops a few feet in the door, and stands there until Kurt notices her.

He tilts his head to one side, and when he open his mouth, half a smile frozen across it, his voice echoes around the room like it's empty. _Well, hello_.

She can't help the smile that pulls at her lips, but as the other heads in the room turn to face her, it hits her, _hard_. She doesn't know these people, not anymore. Quinn, Finn, Rachel, and Puck all have bands on their left ring fingers but she honestly can't begin to guess whose match, and Santana has what looks like a baby bump and really, it's just too hard.

Because she walked out on them once, and they hardly even flinch when she does it again.

Another two years later, she gets a letter from Kurt on simple stationary. His dad died, and he knows she hates them but was wondering if she wouldn't mind attending the funeral.

Mercedes is halfway through writing a response that no, she can't make it, when she wonders who the hell let this happen to them, and instead goes out to buy a black dress.


	8. Chapter 8

Quinn Fabray spells out perfection the way Noah Puckerman spells out dead-beat. (At least that's what everybody always thought.)

Her dad's a deacon at the Church of Jesus Christ two blocks from her house, and her mom hosts Bible studies twice a week and has a hot meal on the table every night, and the Fabray family is nothing short of picture perfect.

(Except her mom burns toast, and her dad has charges on his credit card under the name miscellaneous and comes home smelling like lavender twice a week.)

When Quinn's fifteen, new teacher Mr. Erickson walks into her AP English class with a smile that blinds and a briefcase that smells new, and she kind of already realizes she's screwed. Because her 4.0 grade point average started to get a little hard to maintain when she became head cheerleader and is it really her fault that the other teachers give her a little help when it comes to schoolwork.

So when he sits on the edge of his desk and gives an assignment that sounds vaguely like he's been reading too much into what he could post on his MySpace profile, Quinn's like fuck. (Because she was never really a good girl, she was just damn good at faking it.)

At eight that night the paper still isn't written, and she's run out of excuses. So while her mom is telling Anita, their housekeeper, that the bathroom floor doesn't shine like it needs to; while her dad is charging hotel rooms to the credit card he puts in his sock drawer, Quinn sits down at her computer and takes a deep breath.

She writes for two straight hours, and when all is said and done her school essay still isn't finished, but she has five pages titled _People in Glass Houses_. (She walks in the next morning and flashes the grin that got her a down payment on a car towards Mr. Erickson and her report card still says A+ at the end of the semester.)

She meets Noah "Puck" Puckerman when she's six and doing charity work with her mom. He's sans mohawk but he's got a smile that makes her stomach clench, so when he approaches her she flashes a smile and tells him her favorite color.

Being sadistic comes to her in middle school when she's watching Puck being grouped by a second string cheerleader in the hallway.

She's on her way to Biology when a sliver of smooth skin flashes in her peripheral vision, and when she turns it's like being punched in the chest. She's so surprised that she actually drops her books, causing Puck to startle and tug the end of his shirt down. When the guy leaning against the lockers next to him notices Puck stiffen, he follows his friend's line of sight right to her and then to her Biology book.

He looks awkward, like the kind of guy who consistently runs into things, and when he bends to pick up her fallen books her assumptions are proven correct. His books slip, slamming to the floor as he lets out a nervous laugh and he glances up at her before bending the rest of the way to the ground.

For a quick second her eyes flicker back to Puck, but he's not looking at her, and it may make her a bitch but suddenly, in that moment, she wants to hurt him the way he's hurting her.

So she rips a piece of paper out of her notebook, pulls a pen out of her pocket, and lowers herself to the floor.

Her laugh may be false, and her eyes may hold fake interest, but the relief that courses through her body when she straightens and finds Puck staring at her, fists and jaw clenched, makes her think that maybe the book on her nightstand has it wrong.

(Revenge is enough to heal any wound.)

Her dad has an affair when she's sixteen. She finds out by accident because her life has never been fair, just flawless.

It's a Friday and she comes home early from tumbling to the sound of shouting and slammed doors and accusations that force the breath from her lungs. Turns out the cross on the church's secretary's neck doesn't mean she's sinless, just a convincing Christian.

Anyway the house goes silent when she slams the door five minutes after she walks in, and Quinn goes stumbling into the kitchen expecting blood or divorce papers or packed bags and she doesn't want to be a freaking statistic like Puck or Finn or Mike Chang.

But there's nothing. The room looks exactly like it did that morning, all sparkling white countertops and shiny chrome appliances, and two people sitting on opposite sides of the kitchen table. Her mom turns, swipes a hand across her cheek, smiles.

"Hey honey, how was practice?"

Her dad doesn't leave, and her mom doesn't cry. But she doesn't talk anymore, really, and her father leaves on business trips that they're not allowed to bring up at the weekly Bible study, and she's not stupid.

(Rachel Berry doesn't have a thing on Quinn Fabray's acting skills.)

By tenth grade she's high school royalty, and there's really nothing she can do to take a leap off the pedestal. So her days are spent doing back flips and posting nasty comments on Rachel Berry's MySpace.

Eventually, though, it all comes back to bite her in the ass. And Quinn doesn't care how many ounces of weed that Spanish teacher with too much product in his hair found in Finn's locker, there is no way in hell she's letting him spend any more time alone with that Broadway tramp.

(Pleasing Sylvester is just an added bonus.)

On a Tuesday during sophomore year, Quinn steps on the scale with Sue Sylvester standing behind her, and when the numbers flash on the screen she can't breathe. Because it says 105 and that's the same weight she's been since freshman year. Because there's this weight on her shoulders, too, that's there constantly, and Quinn's convinced herself in the dark of her room that maybe if she screwed up, maybe if she was just that imperfect that the pressure on her chest would lessen.

(But she plays what she knows, and somehow that always ends in cowardice.)

So after practice she sends a text to her boyfriend's best friend about wine coolers and Chemistry homework, and then drives the six miles to his house. And maybe she's not drunk when it happens, but finally getting air to her aching lungs feels a hell of a lot like that.

(Punishment comes in many forms, and her's will have ten fingers and ten toes. They say it's the angel's fall from grace.)

Telling Finn is easy, once she's got the lie down. Because they've been together since seventh grade and she knows he'll do the right thing. He'll play supportive boyfriend because his dad didn't and that's just the kind of guy Finn Hudson is.

Telling Puck never gets crossed off her to-do list, because he's always been a little like his father.

He finds out anyway, and in typical Puckerman fashion he confronts her in the middle of a crowded hallway and he's always known her best. Because there she can't run or hide, so she takes a deep breath and musters up the inner bitch that's always hiding just beneath the surface.

Calling him a Lima Loser is simultaneously the best and worst decision of Quinn Fabray's life.

Five years ago he'd probably grab her hand as she walked away, tell her again that she's wrong, that he's _not_ his dad, but five years ago is ten years ago and they're not that naive anymore.

Here's the funny thing: the most painful thing about this situation isn't that she has to give birth, or that sometimes she feel so alone it's painful to move. No, the most excruciating detail about this whole thing is that deep down in her heart Quinn Fabray truly does love Finn Hudson.

She loves his innocence, that raw youthfulness that she has long since lost. She loves him because sometimes when she places a hand under her stomach his eyes are big and bright and hazel in color and there's nothing on his face but wonderment.

Quinn Fabray loves Finn Hudson, so she rips his heart out and watches him bleed the rest of his adolescence out onto the pavement.

It's not like she thought he wouldn't find out, but she kind of hoped that Rachel Berry wouldn't be the one to drop the other shoe.

She goes into labor in April on her back porch, and she doesn't even hesitate to pick up her phone and dial Puck. He answers on the third ring, exhaling a slightly out of breath hello, and she really can't stop the image of tangled satin sheets and wedding ring clad fingers wrapped out biceps made of stone.

(Puck's pool cleaning business was notorious.)

But the pain overrides any unwanted jealousy she may have, and there's this long drawn out second where all she can do is squeeze her eyes and bite the inside of her cheek until it draws blood. When she can finally breathe, he's talking and not for the first time does she appreciate his perception.

I'm on my way.

Labor's hard, handing over her baby girl is harder.

The crying starts the second the adoptive parents cross over the threshold into the world with a piece of her soul, and Puck sort of stands there for a second until he lets out a sigh that kind of shudders around the edges and kicks off his shoes.

She can see him in the corner of her eye, so when he finally settles on one side of the bed, she slides over until her face is buried in the space between his shoulder and neck. He slides his fingers into her hair, and she begins to wonder when life will give her a break.

Glee, ironically, grows closer with the absence of a tiny member that previously resided in her stomach, and it's not even weird to spend the night at Rachel's in September of her senior year.

Their truce goes like this:

Rachel comes to Quinn like she did after telling Finn, and sits down next to her with a sigh that's too heavy for any sixteen year old.

"Finn misses you, I think."

She could be a bitch. She could turn around with that infamous smirk of hers and say yeah I bet he does man-hands, but Quinn's taken a cue from Exodus and decided that maybe lying should be crossed off her daily to-do list.

"No, I think he misses the idea of me. He loves you."

The brunette allows a smile to tug at the ends of her lips, and because she's always been a little socially stunted she hugs Quinn and whispers _I'm sorry_ into her ear before pulling away and running to find her future.

Once she's around the corner, Quinn splays a hand across her stomach and repeats Rachel's words.

The thing is, Quinn's not too sure who she's apologizing to; maybe to the baby, or Puck, or Finn, but probably to all three _and_ Rachel. Or, maybe, just about the lie that she told about a guy she used to know.

(Because old habits have always died hard.)

Her senior year, Glee takes Sectionals and Regionals, and Quinn Fabray has never been so proud of a group of people in her entire life.

(Apparently that crazy emotional pregnancy state never really goes away.)

Five years after she walks across a stage with a cap and gown, she and her husband sit down in hard chairs in the middle of a doctor's office and find out that she can't have children.

Well not _can't_ , it would just be very difficult.

(That's what her doctor says, like their attempts at having a family is a math problem that can be solved using mile long equations and a graphing calculator.)

So they begin that process. The one that involves hormones, and needles, and endless visits to the hospital. The one that always ends with her sitting at the foot of her tub, watching the clock tick away her dreams. The one that involves faking laughs at baby showers, and waving away sympathy like it's lethal.

It's enough to make anyone crazy.

Seven years after graduation, their group of twelve is a now a group of ten. Seven have rings on their fingers, five have kids, two are divorced, two separated, one with brain cancer, and one dead.

(That's not even including their teachers.)

So when she gets a frantic call from Kurt about dead dads and black outfits, she calls her husband and then the airport.

And then she sits down and answers a question she asked too long ago.

Life will never give her, will never give any of _them_ , a chance in hell to make it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when Finn hit that mailman? That's what writing this felt like.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth is: jealousy's an ugly business and the neighbors are all a little too happy to watch the golden family fall from their pedestals.

Matt Rutherford is a C average student with a trust fund and a dad who came to every t-ball game. (It's practically a fucking oxymoron.)

His mom doesn't hide bruises and his dad doesn't smell of booze and who could even ask for more. Matt Rutherford's life is picture perfect; so when it falls apart his mom's book club friends place dainty hands over their painted mouths and his dad's golfing buddies shake their heads and pull their families closer like tragedy is contagious.

The truth is: jealousy's an ugly business and the neighbors are all a little too happy to watch the golden family fall from their pedestals.

Mommy dearest pops anti-depressants even though daddy's home every night for dinner, and during the few business trips he takes Matt gets taken to football practices by a nanny with a sweet voice and hard rules. But his mom promises new bikes and videogames and Matt just happens to forget to mention Nanny Clarice to his dad.

Then, one day, his mom paints the bathroom tile red like she really couldn't help it, and no matter how hard Matt shakes her she won't wake up. Sirens shatter the serene bubble this neighborhood has built and it's really no surprise no one forgives them for it.

Paul Rutherford stalks the hospital hallway like he owns them, which he does, and listens to doctors whisper a bipolar diagnosis likes it's an answer to prayers not a prison sentence.

Two days and a handful of signatures later, the Laura Rutherford who stunned in silk for benefits is back to being Laura McNeil who cries in cotton for doctors with tiny cups filled with rainbow-colored pills. No one presses because he's fucking Paul Rutherford and you don't become rich by being stupid.

(Matt vaguely wonders if suicidal trophy wife can be filed under irreconcilable differences.)

He begs to be taken out of private school because he's tired of the hushed whispers that curl around him like smoke, and his dad complies two weeks into eighth grade. But, still, when he walks through his new halls with kids who don't consider Ralph Lauren a staple in their closets their eyes still follow him. He's paranoid for three full days, spends them pulling on his collar and eating his lunch alone, before a perky cheerleader with a mane of dark curly hair and a mouth that spits venom plops herself on his lap and asks when he's going to get off this shy stint because he is way too fucking hot not to act like it.

That's the end of that. (Two days later he meets Noah 'Puck' Puckerman and Finn Hudson at football tryouts and things start looking up. Or start looking down depending on what you know about the rest of his story.)

-O-

Sophomore year he gets put into an English class with Finn Hudson and Brittany Pierce, and maybe Puck. He doesn't show up enough for Matt to confirm it.

It's kind of mind-blowing some of the things being a football player can get you into or out of.

Anyway.

A month in, Santana Lopez saunters through the door with a transfer slip and a ring in her belly button; she situates herself in his lap with a purred _hello_ before turning and talking to Brittany for the rest of the hour.

That's probably why, when his teacher approaches him about the paper they wrote last week, he tips his head to the side and frowns.

Apparently it was an _outstanding literary work that exposed the inner darkness of a society that expects greatness_.

After he translates that into something less Rachel Berry-ish, Matt scrunches his nose and turns to a shocked looking Finn.

Do you think I should tell her I downloaded it from the internet, he asks just loud enough that the class erupts in laughter and a sleepy looking Puck slaps his hand with a proud smirk.

See, the thing about Matt: he's learned to lie. To piece together the sharp fragments of a broken childhood to resemble something like a fairytale. And just because he wrote a five page paper about how Rose Kennedy was right when she said that time doesn't heal all wounds, doesn't mean he's going to give up the illusion he's built around himself like armor.

(It's a stupid paper, he had decided that when it was assigned, but there's a letter waiting for him under his bed from a mother he never really knew and it just hurts, okay, it hurts so bad he wants to rip his own skin off. It tickles at the edges of his conscious until he can't do anything else but sit down and type. "It has been said that time heals all wounds. I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue, and the pain lessens, but it is never gone."

And then he thinks: this is _sane_.)

Glee hits him like a smack in the face, because his mom used to sing. All the time. Random verses from random songs and he'd have them stuck in his head for days. But sometimes, when he's standing there lights so blinding that he can't see anything but the shadows of the audience, he can breathe.

Just sometimes, though.

-O-

Santana pushes him into a closet after Puck and Quinn and kisses him hard, but she tastes like regret already and he just can't. So he doesn't.

And then, she comes to him after Finn.

Her dress is twisted, make-up smeared, heel broken and he kind of stands there awkwardly, arm extended across the doorway until she tilts her head and angles an eyebrow. "So are you just going to stand there, or can I come in. I have tequila." She holds the bottle up like a peace offering and a threat all rolled into one, and he honestly doesn't care which one it is.

Santana Lopez is this big ball of fire and ice, contradicting herself at every turn and god help him if he doesn't fall for her in that moment.

They drink too much and do things they shouldn't because she just betrayed her best friend. And after she pulls a cigarette out of thin air and lights it in his bed, letting secrets seep out among the smoke until it burns down to her fingertips. He kissed her then, swallowing her words and that moment because it's the only thing he can do. She leaves, and he wonders what it means that he's already missing the feel of her laughter against his chest.

They do it again, and then again, and again until she's the only one smoking but not the only one letting private thoughts spill over swollen lips.

Quinn goes into labor while they're lying in his bed, and she gets up without a word, leaves with another hard kiss and he thinks _oh_.

Five minutes later, she yells up the stairs that it shouldn't take him this fucking long to get dressed unless he's suddenly turned into Kurt.

-O-

Three years later, and they're scheduling doctor appointments and sonograms, and his dad looks at the swell of her stomach like he used to look at Matt's mom.

They name her Sophia, and she's beautiful. Just tiny and beautiful and bright, and he's wonders how it's possible to love something this much.

The signs start slowly, but he grew up with them and they're kind of hard to miss.

She stops going out, stops eating, drops fifteen pounds more than she weighed pre-pregnancy. They used to switch nights up with the baby, and then he'd start getting up to find her already awake. She used to be all activity and then, slowly, he had to start coaxing her to go to the store.

Doctors give her a post-partum depression diagnosis, a hand-full of rainbow-colored pills, and a card for the best psychologist in the area; Matt gives her six months and every healed childhood wound he had.

And then he walks, because he doesn't think he can lose her, but he knows he won't survive losing himself.

He gets his daughter every weekend, but it just isn't enough, and isn't that the mantra of his entire fucking life.

-O-

Brittany dies, and Mike stops getting out of bed. Finn gets a brain tumor and stops calling. It's really no surprise that he walks to the edge of his new pool in his new backyard, and finds Puck at the bottom. There's a letter in his hand from Kurt about dead dads, but he smears the ink with chlorine water and blood.

Whoever has it out for them, he thinks, is doing a hell of a job.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's weird, seeing her domesticated and happy, so that's probably why he's so intent on ruining it. The funny thing is: she gets there first.

They're normal, before. That's how they define it: before and after. Artie was a runner _before_ ; his mom got a Prozac prescription _after_. His father was proud of him before; he rarely spoke after.

Before: his family has dinners together and his dad stays late at work sometimes but not always. It's simple, easy, a small town life personified. And then.

~0~

After: it's a Tuesday.

One second they're chatting about his birthday plans and the next it's just blood and the sickening sound of metal being bent and pleas for help that cause his mother to lose her voice for a week. She crawls away with a scratch on her forehead and shards of glass in her hair that glitter in the sunlight. He doesn't get to walk away and really there's not too much to say after that.

He's in the hospital forever, and when he finally does get home his mom follows him around like he's plotting his own demise by stairs; his dad hides baseball equipment and golf clubs and he's not obvious about it but Artie knows he's beyond disappointed.

They get second third fourth opinions but the men and woman in their pristine white coats all just shake their heads and point to x-rays he can't understand.

~0~

Two years later and his mom is still dragging him to appointments and church like either could heal him; it's on another Tuesday when his dad strings together more than three words to tell his mom to leave him the fuck alone it's over, they need to move on. His mom looks like his dad just plowed his son over again, but Artie just breathes deep and decides not to give a damn.

He doesn't go out, doesn't talk to his previous friends, just sits quietly in class and pretends he can't hear the whispered chants of you can't you can't you can't.

~0~

It takes too long but by sophomore year he's more than caught up and gets placed in the AP lit class with all the kids who sat in their tiny desks back in fifth grade with pity in their eyes and sneers on their faces.

The first assignment is kind of interesting (if he was nine but. still) and his paper is done three days before its due date. The beginning's boring and the end is the introduction just with smaller words but sandwiched in between all the fluff is a lesson: Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something.

(It's so beautifully written that even Artie almost believes that it's true.)

~0~

It's in that same class that he meets Tina Cohen-Chang. With her stutter and her averted eyes; the black clothes she wears like a suit of armor, life just doesn't seem as awkward around her.

~0~

Glee falls into his lap unexpectedly. Well, technically it's thrown into his lap by Tina and he's so busy staring at her that she's wheeled him over and signed his name before he can say no.

It's not bad when it's just the five of them, these high school misfits singing because it's the only thing they can do, but then there's Puck and Matt and Mike, and then there's Quinn and Brittany and Santana. Glee transforms into the _Real World: Lima_ before he can blink; everyone has a title and cripple is pinned to his chest like a name tag.

When Tina chooses to stay right next to him, he's not that upset because he's used to having Tina by now, but there's this nagging feeling in his stomach when he looks at her.

(Like he needs anymore complications.)

~0~

The pairs all switch at once, like a square dance, and he's not really that uncomfortable until Tina makes a pregnant Quinn sob in the middle of practice and the only one not stunned into silence is Puck who makes a smartass remark with an underlying tone of _don't shit with her or I'll kick your ass_.

It scares him and infuriates him but it's his own fucking fault to think she wouldn't take the chance to jump the guy with functioning legs.

(He'd say heart, too, but everyone knows Noah Puckerman's died long ago.)

~0~

After she forms an entire sentence without stuttering in an empty hallway, his heart slams to the floor and he wheels away without bothering to pick it up and brush it off.

It takes two weeks, monologues from both Kurt and Mercedes that each border on Rachel Berry type crazy, and a two hour talk about lying and scars. He's exhausted but they're together. Finally.

The baby-gate finale goes like this: Quinn calls (threatens and blames) Puck who calls Finn. Santana finds out from Brittany who swears her ESPN told her but no one really believes her.

Puck goes with the screaming mother, Artie sort of suspects that he and Finn drew straws, while everybody else sits in the waiting room watching Brittany and Mike sneaking entire boxes of sterile gloves out of storage rooms. Tina smiles at them, in her navy blouse and blue jeans, and is the first one to say congratulations to Puck when he comes out saying their daughter, his daughter is just beautiful.

~0~

They stay together through high school. He's thinking of becoming a teacher and she takes up photography sometime at the end of her senior year. They're happy, but he's always wanted to be able to call her his wife so he buys a ring and hands it to her while she's stirring Mac&Cheese on the stove. (Because they have never been anywhere near traditional.)

She says yes, and wears white like the virgin bride she never was. The pregnancy is expected and at the hospital, nine months in, Brittany still claims her ESPN told her, but this time everybody laughs and tells her they love her because this birth isn't tragic.

It's weird, seeing her domesticated and happy, so that's probably why he's so intent on ruining it. (He has been defined as a masochist since the accident thirteen years ago that striped him of his legs and his life.)

The funny thing is: she gets there first.

He finds them on their kitchen floor. The special one with the lowered countertops and drawers that sit within reach because no matter how normal they appear, he still spends his entire life in a chair with wheels.

She doesn't even react, just stands up and fixes the straps on her dress; tells him he's going to take a shower and then they can make dinner. (He doesn't realize until it's too late that he didn't just take her pain, but her life, when he tried to fix her.)

He kicks her out, because he has always been so damn good at being the victim and now isn't a time to change his ways. There are divorce papers at her hotel room the next day and he takes Julianne for a couple weeks just until things can be settled.

Three weeks later, she calls him sobbing. He expects apologies and begging, but instead she tells him that she just needs some time to figure herself out, to find the person she lost so long ago. Tells him to remind Julianne that Mommy loves her but that Mommy is sick right now. Tells him she'll be back soon. Tells him the papers are on the porch.

(She hangs up before he can tell her that he never planned on signing the papers himself.)

His mom moves in with him, just to help him out until he can figure some stuff out. Julianne's just starting to sleep through the night and he thinks maybe, just maybe we'll make it.

~0~

It seems like it all happens at once.

He's at his kitchen table sliding his finger under the seal of a thick white envelope with Kurt's California address written neatly in the top left corner, when the phone rings. Matt sounds panicked, out of breath and half choking on god knows what, so Artie presses the phone to his ear and still only catches the end of the sentence.

What he does hear reminds him of that one joke: grandma's on the roof and she won't come down.

(Puck's in a coma and he won't wake up.) He thinks they probably deserve the hell they're all paying.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It won't feel like drowning after a while. Maybe, hopefully, somehow.

Kurt Hummel slips his feet into his mother's three hundred dollar Miu Miu navy pumps when he's three, and everything is sort of downhill from there.

(Because, okay yeah, being gay didn't exactly shatter his life into pieces but it sure as hell screwed with the recuperation process.)

By sophomore year, Kurt's holding down a 3.8 grade point average, and his fashion sense is a solid twelve on a one to ten scale, but his ass is still being thrown into dumpsters and he kind of wonders if blaming the daily acts of violence on Noah Puckerman's desire to see said ass is as unhealthy as he thinks it is.

Anyway.

His point is, by the start of his second year in this godforsaken place he's considering just staying under the radar (as much as he can with a sparkly fedora) but that plan goes straight to hell second period of his first day.

It's not like he's never seen Finn Hudson before, the guy does hold his new Ralph Lauren pieces while his best friend is rubbing his hands together like he gets a fucking prize for tossing the gay kid into trash, it's just he's never seen him like this.

All built muscle and warm smiles, when he turns to hand back a syllabus or laugh with Brittany about rainbows, and it's like hello my name's unrequited love can I come kick your ass. Because Finn's dating high school royalty and his best friend, while being unsuccessful at keeping order in anything else in his life, is adamant at maintaining the social hierarchy.

Puck's best friend being gay would put a ripple in the water; his best friend making out with someone who takes a daily dumpster dive would be just plain unacceptable.

So Kurt bites his tongue and resolves to fail English.

If he had been paying attention, though, his paper would have started with _we choose those we like; with those we love, we have no say in the matter_ and ended with something along the lines of _life isn't fair so max out the nearest credit card and get the fuck over it_.

(His five-hundred-dollar-an-hour therapist says he has displacement issues, but he can't really take her seriously when she cried their second session because he offered one small comment about her shoes and the probability that they're directly connected with the tan line on her finger.)

-O-

His mom gets sick, and there are hospital visits and medical bills and even when she's home she's not _really_ there and his dad is _never_ there and losing everything isn't supposed to be this effortless.

When she dies, his dad doesn't get out of bed for three days. Just lays there listening to a Leonard Skinner CD on repeat and later Kurt figures it was the best thing that his dad could have done.

Because by the time he actually does get up, Kurt's already lukewarm to the idea that he'll be mainly on his own from now on, so even when Burt stays at the garage because he's got a lot of work to make up Kurt doesn't worry, just heats up some casserole someone left on their kitchen table and tries really, really hard not to cry because it will ruin his facial.

The grief doesn't really hit until two months later.

He's doing something normal, washing his face or grabbing a cup of water (because orange juice aggravates his vocal chords) and suddenly it's there. Painful, and rushing up to fill his lungs, until he's absolutely positive he's drowning from the inside. (His therapist calls it sorrow. He tells her that maybe it was her hair instead of her shoes.)

The next two months he's under water. Everything muffled, muted. Like when you touch the top of a stove and it doesn't really hurt until you step back and put it into focus. His mom's gone; so is his dad, sort of, and they'll add another number to those statistics they put in stories about cancer patients and single parents.

His mom becomes blurry within twelve months. She's faded around the edges like a picture that has been handled too much. A memory relieved for too long, and it hurts. (He stops going to therapy for two weeks but there's a chapter in a book under his bed titled _guilt_.)

Because two weeks before she had sat him down and told him to be anything he wanted to be, to live because sooner or later he wouldn't have the option anymore. His mom taught him everything he has every thought, has ever known, and he can't even remember the way she smells.

(So yeah, maybe spending whole days on the floor in her room makes him a little gayer than he was before, but it doesn't matter. Not ever.)

-O-

He stops trying to stay out of Puck's harassment range sophomore year, because honestly it just isn't worth it anymore. (And besides he gets to see Finn up close and personal, so. Upside.)

After that things happen so quickly he can barely keep up.

Quinn's pregnant and Finn's the father, and then he's not; Mercedes loves him and then she doesn't. So really it's no surprise that he doesn't realize his father has a girlfriend until it's too late to stop it. Too late to put the brakes on a fast approaching train wreck.

He falls out of love with Finn on a Friday. To be more specific he falls out of love with Finn Hudson right around the time his dad gets down on one knee, and Finn is caught with his hand under Rachel Berry's skirt at the celebration dinner.

He'll fade, eventually, like his mother. A crinkled photograph with a background of slightly out of focus memories connected to it; it won't feel like drowning after a while. Maybe, hopefully, somehow.

-O-

Senior year and they win Regionals. (It's not quite unexpected.)

Rachel's holding Finn's hands but looking at Puck, and Quinn is watching Finn while Puck's hand is up her shirt and he just can't be here anymore. Not with these happy smiling couples who spend more time wishing for what they don't have than appreciating who they do.

Unfortunately, Quinn's water breaks as easily as their hearts and he has to spend an uncountable number of hours in a stuffy waiting room watching Finn watch Rachel. In the background he can hear Mike tell Brittany that a defibrillator is way too big to fit in her purse and maybe if he could breathe, he'd laugh.

He spends the next five days taking all of his finals and the last two packing memories into boxes.

He lands in California a week and three minutes after the trophy (cool and metal and inexplicably harsh) is placed in his waiting hands.

-O-

His name's Ethan and he's a college freshman with a rich father and a career course already mapped out.

They write books about this kind of romance.

Experimental. Fragile. Fast-paced. Whirlwind. Painful. Unpredictable.

The kind of love no one ever, ever forgets. But Ethan has a future to follow and Kurt has never really believed in fairytales.

He falls out of love with Ethan on a Friday. To be more specific he falls out of love with Ethan Harper right around the time he gets a phone call from his father about an internship in Washington and a pretty brunette in New Hampshire with an equally as rich father and the term trophy wife already sewn into her Bergdorf sweaters.

He'll fade, eventually, like his mother. A crinkled photograph with a background of slightly out of focus memories connected to it; it won't feel like drowning after a while. Maybe, hopefully, somehow.

-O-

His dad calls. Once a day at first, but there's a new wife and a new son and a _sorry kid I just got busy ya know_ that sounds a little less regretful every time it's filtered through the phone.

Finn's mom calls twice a week at first, but the wife's role is awfully hard to play and maybe the old Kurt would care. (His new therapist says he's bitter. He says she's senile.)

Finn calls once month without fail. Eventually he just stops answering. These memories hurt a little less with every shot he downs; every blonde he takes home. (His old therapist would probably call it repression, but he trys not to think of her as anything besides ugly sweaters and out of date flats.)

-O-

Two days into Christmas break and there's a message on his machine; Finn and tumor and surgery and he really only comprehends enough to buy a plane ticket to Ohio. His family's there and it hurts a little too much, so he hugs his dad when he arrives with Finn's mom, and waits in the hallway until it's just Glee in the hospital room.

No one says anything about his disappearance and whether it's because of the scar on Finn's head or the fact that everybody's too wrapped up in their own personal tragedies, he doesn't care.

(He's still gone two weeks later, and only once the plane passes over the California state line can he breathe again.)

Brittany's dead and it's just too much, way too much, so he sends a card and buries himself neck deep in a blonde who tastes of tequila and hopes he doesn't smell too much of regret.

-O-

In April of his junior year in college, Finn calls seven times in twenty minutes and he picks up the phone a little breathless with an excuse already slipping between his teeth.

His step-brother doesn't even get to _heart attack_ before it is vomit filling his mouth instead of lies. His dad's dead and they haven't spoken in four months. He calls his therapist but all he can do is dry heave into the phone until she threatens to dial 9-1-1. And still all he does is hang up in response.

There's not enough gin in the world to fix this. Doesn't mean he still doesn't try.

Three days of binging and Finn's pounding on his door, all six foot two of angry football player swearing like the teenager he always was and when he swings open the door slightly off balance the first thing Kurt notices is the way his hair hides the angry scar across his head.

The thing about anger is it drives people, and Finn gives an hour long speech about how his mother can't do it again, how she won't even get out of bed. It's too harsh by half and cold enough to remind him of sophomore year _Santana_ and Finn's halfway through explaining his need for someone to help him because he doesn't even know what flowers to order, or how to even _order_ flowers, when Kurt hurls the nearest empty bottle across his apartment and then throws up all over his brand new shoes.

The cards are sent out three days later, and they still don't talk about the sixty-two hours in between then and when the bottle shattered glass splinters on Finn's shoulders.

-O-

It's his phone that rings, not Finn's, when they're waiting for their bags at the Ohio airport and Kurt would ask why if he wasn't so busy trying to drag a limp Finn into the nearest cab; he's not sure how they've switched roles so quickly.

There's been enough death for a lifetime, but Noah Puckerman has never been that considerate of other people's issues.

The waiting room is split down the middle. The strong and the weak, the ones who ran and the ones who stayed, and Kurt's in there for three minutes when he thinks they'd be a lot closer if the divided the room based on the emotionally screwed and the well-adjusted.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And finally, when all is said and done, she presses her face into the space between Puck's shoulder blades so she won't have to watch him hyperventilate in Matt's bathroom

The thing about Rachel Berry is that she's undefinable.

There's no concrete explanation for the way she is, no matter how many people blame it on the sexual orientation of her fathers, or the crazy likeness she has to Shelby. Rachel is the combined effort of all of them and simultaneously someone no one else has seen.

The competitions begin early. She's three and should be splitting her time between playing with too skinny barbies and throwing temper tantrums that would rival the future Brittany Spears umbrella incident; instead she's spending hours singing and tap dancing and learning that nothing compares to the feeling of ice cold gold clenched between her fingers.

(Later, in a high school bathroom, while scrubbing cherry red slushie out of her white blouse, she'll wonder if maybe they ruined her somehow.)

-0-

In kindergarten, her block towers are always the best, and in elementary school she picks up cursive and her multiplication tables faster than anyone. Junior high is a whole other mountain to climb, and she can't seem to find the right footholds. Childhood superiority, Rachel finds, doesn't depend on how well your Arrière is, but on how fast you move from training bra to actual bra without assistance from the rough toliet paper in the restrooms. Quinn Fabray manages to climb Everest faster than most and is declared Queen with a crown that was already supposed to be engraved with Rachel's name.

(Maybe the problem wasn't finding the right footholds, but making sure that you're not climbing behind someone who greases them as she goes by. Derek Hutchinson may have invented slushies in high school, but Quinn had a patent on sabotage by age ten.)

Freshman year, in the hallway between her first period computer class and honors Biology, she turns to move out of the way of a kid with a wheelchair and gets a face full of blueberry slushie for her trouble. The sting of the syrup and ice stuns the whole hallway into silence and a jock with mohawk spins on his heel, his face a mirror image of her own shock. For a split second she thinks he's going to apologize, and then the hallway erupts into laughter and someone slaps his back with a 'fucking hilarious Puckerman' and she flees up three flights of stairs. Nothing gets better after that, and she starts hiding stain remover in her bedroom.

It's only her luck that she falls for the good guy, the exact opposite of his best friend; the only one who loves Quinn Fabray enough to stand by her during the biggest fall since Eden. So maybe, after months of burying her head in her pillow at night and praying like a little girl she decides that she won't get what she wants unless she takes it. Finn Hudson is the Leonardo DiCaprio to her Kate Winslet. (Except, the whole you jump I jump thing is irrelevant because he left her for a few football players while the devil incarnate stayed behind with his hands in his pockets and a sheepish smile like he was always meant to be the good guy.)

So when she finds out that the Queen was not only a slut but also a cheating, lying slut, the words tumble from her lips, red-hot like the ripe fruit from the forbidden tree.

-0-

The summer after her first year in college, she finds Noah waiting for her at the baggage claim. He's wearing that stupid smirk that was partially the cause of their brief dating stint her sophomore year. He's not carrying flowers, or a ring and maybe that's why she doesn't turn and walk away. Because they haven't spoken in over a year, and he's still the same Noah Puckerman. The guy confident enough in his charm to believe that picking her up from the airport after spending a year avoiding the fact that they not only slept together the night before she left for New York, but that he also drunkenly asked her to stay. (She, for her part, had actually considered it for a fraction of a moment before remembering that he had enough Jack Daniels in his system to take down a bull.)

Anyway, when she gets close enough, he tilts his head to match his grin and says 'you didn't stay' because of course his alcohol tolerance is more than a fucking bull. But he's Leo plus the _you jump I jump_ and so she smiles and lets him carry her bags.

Five months after that, Quinn calls during winter break, panicked in the subtle kind of way she got from Santana, and tells her that Finn has brain cancer. Rachel hyperventilates on the phone long enough for Puck to figure that something is actually wrong and it's not something like a Broadway play has shut down because the whole cast has pneumonia. They're on the next flight to Chicago, and Puck squeezes her hand hard enough for her to remember that Finn was Puck's best friend long before he was her boyfriend.

A year and a half after they crowded into a room during the recovery of one of their own, they sit in a church during the funeral of another. Britney's death takes the breath out of her, and she only notices two days after, because she's been so busy making sure Finn wasn't under too much stress and helping Quinn make sure Santana and Matt didn't have the frantic look in their eyes twenty four hours a day. And finally, when all is said and done, she presses her face into the space between Puck's shoulder blades so she won't have to watch him hyperventilate in Matt's bathroom.

-0-

Throughout college and the three years of endless auditions, she gets to watch the slow destruction of her friend's relationships, and just as she's beginning to wonder how they became the most emotionally stable out of the group, the stick turns blue in a department store bathroom stall.

She waits too long to do anything about it, because she knows Puck is good with kids, is great with his sister, but has no idea how he'll be with his own child. But eventually she has to tell him, when the bump begins to get harder to hide, and he sits for a good five minutes, blank-faced with his fists clenched on his knees. She had hoped for excitement, braced for shouting, and was shocked when he wordlessly grabbed his keys and walked out.

He calls her three days later, says that he's going to visit Finn for awhile; that he'll call her later. Two weeks after that, and she's just about given up calling Quinn and emailing Finn, when her phone buzzes with an arrival time. She reconsiders going fourteen times between her dorm and JFK but decides that Puck will just hunt her down anyway. He still doesn't have flowers or a ring but he does have that grin that tilts on its side when he says 'how about Amelia?'

They're married six months later, partially because Rachel's dads are really rather terrifying when it comes to the defilement of their little girl, partially because Puck's mom loves weddings, and mostly because Rachel had decided she had enough of waiting for him to ask and had done it herself.

Amelia's stillborn because that's just the way things work in their lives, and Puck seems to take it like a champ until he scales Matt's fence.

-0-

The thing about Rachel Berry isn't just that she's undefinable, but also that she's good at standing her ground. Whether it's competitions at three, malicious comments at ten, solos at sixteen, or her best friend getting a brain tumor at twenty, she takes no hostages when it comes to getting what she deserves.

Except, on a Thursday in April she gets a phone call saying her husband had decided to be poetic about the fact that he's been drowning for years and threw himself into the bottom of Matt's pool. And suddenly she's eleven and three quarters old again wondering why the hell someone's slicking the footholds of her life. Kate let Leo die because she was selfish with the piece of door that was clearly big enough for the both of them, and for some reason the only thing Rachel can think of is their friends spending countless hours holding her hand like she was the only one who lost something.

The room splits when Mike, after fidgeting and grinding his teeth for twenty minutes, gets up and makes his way to the supply room down the hall. Artie rolls in between Matt and Quinn, because they held their ground. There's room for Finn but no one really expects him to do anything but pace the hallway because the rule of dead dads and half-dead best friends has a standing-only policy. (Also, because Finn almost drowned when he was eight, Puck slipping the cooler string off his ankle just as his air ran out and Rachel knows the guilt, _feels_ the guilt down to her _bones_ , of not noticing Puck's air was running out weeks ago.)

They're silent, eyes on the ground, and maybe they're the ones who stayed behind but that doesn't make them any less susceptible to the dark cloud of tragedy that seems to stalk them all.

Santana and Tina huddle near the water fountain across from them, whispering in hushed tones about the definition of superiority and where Puck would be standing in this stand off of strong versus weak.

Everybody, though, tries without much success to ignore the dead, blond cheerleader in the room. (It doesn't work, and someone should probably stop Mike from stealing too many cotton balls, but no one will because widows have a right to do what they please.)

Rachel finds herself somewhere on the line, flailing futilely for something, anything to grab onto because this is the tenth time since she was fifteen that being in a hospital had made her stomach churn. (Babygate counts because that was universally tragic.)

Kurt walks in, half carrying Finn and everybody turns to look at the boy who ran the farthest, the fastest, away from all of this. He looks up, notices the stares, and his response makes her snort. Makes her breathe again.

"Well hell, you'd think we'd get a fucking break, huh. Oh, and Matt just got caught shoving an entire box of medical masks down his pants."


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Remember when Finn had cancer, and before surgery he would lock himself in the bathroom for so long Matt thought he was cutting his own tumor out with a razor blade."

He's the one who finds Mike first.

Huddled in a corner of a dark hospital supply closet with a fist full of cotton swabs and his fingernails carving half moons into his other palm. Puck doesn't do this, doesn't know how to do anything but put his hand through a wall and hope like hell that his body overrides any pain he should be feeling.

But it's Mike, the guy who proposed to Britney on a freaking merry-go-round and she's gone and Puck's left and so he finds him first.

When the door spills light into a room that's too dark, Mike flinches, and there's a metaphor somewhere in that but Puck's far too tired to find it. So he slides his body into the crack and it worries him that Mike doesn't exhale until the door is pushed shut again.

There are words for this, Rachel's been googling them since they got the call, but they all sound fake and insincere and there are more than five fucking stages of grief, and they sure as hell don't start with anything but anger. So Puck sighs, shifts, asks the air above him what _it needs_ because that's much easier.

The air pauses; gasps like it's suffocating and the sound makes his heart hurt a little. There's a muted thump as Mike lets his head fall to the wall behind him, and suddenly he's just _talking_ like they're kickin' it in Puck's living room after a game and four beers.

"Remember when Finn had cancer, and before surgery he would lock himself in the bathroom for so long Matt thought he was cutting his own tumor out with a razor blade."

Puck can't see him, but Mike lets out a little whoosh of breath after he says it, and it's funny in a terrible _this is how messed up we are_ way.

"Yeah, Rachel kept trying to find a screwdriver to take the doorknob off, and no one could convince her that it wouldn't work."

"And then all of a sudden you disappeared, too. Everybody was freaking out, and Quinn was threatening harm to your future children which just made Rachel cry; it was complete fucking chaos. And then you two just come strolling into the kitchen like you lost track of time or some shit."

Puck's not sure where Mike's going with any of this, but this is more words than he's strung together since Puck first got to the hospital, so he keeps quiet.

"You said something to him. He told me about it later; made me promise I wouldn't say anything."

And then it's like a light bulb clicking on, because Puck knows what's coming, and it was probably less terrifying when he didn't.

Because Mike, in his silently desperate way, is asking him to recreate a year old speech about surviving and being strong and letting the worst of it pass; a speech that Puck had written on his _hand_ and memorized before he ever set foot in Finn's bathroom.

He's unprepared for this, and the silence must be louder than he thought because Mike pleads 'please' like this won't break them both.

So he does, he bullshits a speech in a closet with his widower of a friend; and somehow they both make it off the dirty floor a little more at ease than when they first sat down.

It's fucking ridiculous.

-0-

And all any of that means, is years later when he's laying on stiff white hospital sheets, and his lungs are slowly, painfully expanding like they're afraid they'll be forced to stop again, he spends the entire two days of his suicide hold trying to remember what he said.

And on the third day, when he's still can't get past: "I get it," Mike walks in with coffee and a release form. No one has been allowed near him since Matt dragged him out of the pool and blew air into his chest, and when he asked the nurses, they only said everyone had been forced to go home.

Apparently Rachel's in no condition to operate heavy machinery, and Mike drew the short straw again.

(Which really means, Santana rigged the game like she always does because Mike has always been a little more adjusted than any of them were, even with a dead wife.)

Hospital policy says he has to be pushed in a wheelchair like a fucking invalid, and he's pretty pissed because no one should have made Mike come back here. By floor seven, he's bouncing his knee like he did the night before he jumped into a frigid pool and the words form before he can stop them.

"Did Matt get the blood out of his pool yet?"

It's an innocent question; when it's your blood that could possibly be caked over cement on your friend's pool deck, it's an innocent question. But Mike smacks the emergency stop button on the elevator so hard Puck flinches and then groans low in his throat. His lungs pretty much feel on fire all time now, and he just wants to go home but Mike's looking at him like he murdered Britney in cold-blood all those years ago.

"No, Noah. Matt didn't get the blood out of his pool yet. Because in case you haven't noticed we've all been a little too busy to worry about that. Matt actually refuses to sit in the same fucking room as Santana, which is hard considering she's sleeping on your living room couch, and he spends most of his time in your office. He dropped Sophia off at his parent's house. And Quinn, well- Quinn has been doing okay, except for the fact that every time someone says anything that remotely sounds like she should stop cleaning the oven and sit down she yells loudly about Jewish things that no one but Rachel understands until we leave her alone. Artie's staying in my guest bedroom and Tina's living in a hotel room across town because every single time she sets foot into any of our houses while Artie's there, Julianne cries and hides in the cabinets under the kitchen sink."

"And Kurt. Kurt's dad is dead, Puck, but instead of being able to grieve he's making sure Finn isn't the next one to try and drown himself in a fucking in-ground pool."

If Puck was a man; if Puck wasn't a coward, he'd stop Mike now. Because he's pacing like a caged animal in the short length of the elevator, but before he can decide which he is, Mike stops and drops to the floor. His head falls back to the wall in an eerily familiar way that makes Puck's lungs hurt again.

"Rachel refuses to unlock her bedroom door. I'm not even sure if she's been eating."

There are a million things he could say, but nothing comes out except: "Why are you telling me this?"

Mike sighs like Puck should know this by now. "Because, I want you to know that I get it, okay. I've been there; I'm still there some days and it's been years. But you can't do this, you can't leave us to survive on our own. Mercedes did it willingly and -"

And Puck understands now, because their group has dealt with loss their entire lives, but there's a difference between dropping dead on someone's kitchen floor and purposely sinking yourself to the bottom of a pool.

"We're here because of you. Matt's mom spent half of his childhood on the fifth floor of this hospital getting pills shoved down her throat. It kills him to even pull into the parking lot of this place. But he did it, because it was Britney, and Finn, and now you. Don't make us come back here again okay. We won't survive it."

Five minutes later, when Mike can finally push himself up off the floor, and Puck isn't white-knuckling the armrests of his wheelchair. Mike smacks the emergency stop button and they spend the rest of the ride to the lobby in silence.

But when the doors open, Puck can't help it, so he lets out a small whoosh of air that is half chuckle and half something kind of tragic.

Mike looks down at him from behind the chair, his eyebrows knitted together in confusion.

"It's nothing, you just- you gave me _the speech_."

He doesn't think Mike will get it, doesn't think he will understand what he's saying because that was a year ago, feels like twenty, and Puck barely remembers it.

But then the corners of Mike's mouth turn up slightly before he lifts his head to stare straight ahead.

"Hell yeah I gave you the speech. And it was a damn good one, too."


End file.
